


Madam Secretary 2: Frisky Business

by campitor



Series: Madam Secretary [2]
Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Action/Adventure, Assassination Attempt(s), Don't @ Me, F/M, it's just every single action trope in one fic, yes this is based on die hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:54:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29343168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/campitor/pseuds/campitor
Summary: When a group of radicals makes an attempt on Avasarala's life, Amos steps in to escort her to safety. Featuring all of your favorite action movie tropes, and maybe some of your not-so-favorite ones too.Set a year after the events of the original Madam Secretary fic.
Relationships: Chrisjen Avasarala/Amos Burton
Series: Madam Secretary [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2155374
Comments: 16
Kudos: 37





	Madam Secretary 2: Frisky Business

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a direct follow up to my fic, Madam Secretary, so I recommend reading that smutty little piece if you haven't already! Enjoy! And don't forget to whip your action movie sunglasses off at appropriate intervals!

“It’s not that I’m opposed to it,” James Holden was saying, his hands spread in emphasis, “it’s just, Ilus is still fresh in a lot of people’s minds. I’m not thrilled about going to play mediator on another planet.”

Avasarala sighed. “You won’t be a mediator. You’ll be an _observer_.”

“Yeah, I really don’t see how that’s different.”

 _Well, they’re different fucking words_ , she thought, but she bit her tongue. “Just think about it.” Holden cast her a dubious look with those sad puppy-dog eyes of his.

She stood outside of one of the U.N.’s conference rooms on Luna with the crew of the _Rocinante_. Avasarala had figured that a well-paying job through the ring gates would have been a shoo-in for Holden and his crew and that the meeting would be over and done—apparently not. The other members of the _Rocinante_ ’s brigade of idiots stood a little way back, letting their captain do all the talking with the brass. The Martian pilot was looking around the room like he had never been inside a building before. Naomi and the Mao girl were chatting about air filters or some crap. Bobbie looked bored and scratched at a scab on her arm. Then there was Amos.

Amos. Fucking Amos.

As if he sensed her gaze, the mechanic turned his amiable, empty eyes to her. He grinned. She scowled. He winked, and she cast him a glare that could melt steel and hopefully castrate the bastard through sheer will alone. 

Avasarala still couldn’t decide if she regretted their little tryst. It had been about a year ago at this point, if her math was right. She couldn’t deny that it had been fun—Amos had let her boss him around and had even surprised her by putting a touch of effort into being a gentleman. It had not been what she had been expecting from the big man but, then again, she certainly hadn’t gone into the evening expecting to have sex with him either. She thought about how he had loved it when she slapped him, the way his voice had gone soft and low and sweet as candy. _That_ had awoken a few new things in her. She constantly oscillated between embarrassment and the lack of care that came with a life as lived as hers.

That being said, she would still rip his dick from his body if anyone found out.

Amos was still watching her from the corner of his eye. He reached up to touch his cheek as if he could still remember the sting of her hand as she slapped him, and Avasarala got the uncanny feeling that he could read her mind. Her scowl deepened.

Maybe she didn’t regret the sex. Amos had certainly been eager enough that he made it good, worshipful and novel and just a smidge unhinged. And maybe they had a bit more in common when it came to sex than she was willing to admit. Regardless, she certainly regretted losing one of her saris to his pilfering mitts. She still vowed to get that back. It hadn’t been one of her favorites, but it was about the principle of the thing.

That was what she told herself, at least.

One of her guards tapped her shoulder impatiently. She shooed him off. Holden was blabbering away, oblivious to the fact that she wasn’t paying any attention to him. 

“…but I think we could do some good if we bring some live soil, maybe some seeds engineered for that kind of environment. That might solve the problems the colony is facing without us ever having to step in…”

Avasarala tuned him out again, nodding at the appropriate intervals. Amos was staring at her, stroking his beard. She begrudgingly had to admit to herself that he still looked handsome. The wisps of grey were starting to become more prominent against the brown hair, and it gave him a certain air of ruggedness. The thought made her grumpy. When he caught her looking, he tugged it gently between his fingers, then grinned even wider. His smile made him look like an idiot.

Avasarala was about to shoo Holden’s merry band of misfits away when Amos, with all the subtly of a teenage boy at a nude beach, let his gaze fall down to her breasts, then back up to her eyes. He winked again, and Avasarala saw red. He was driving her crazy. She was going to kill him. She was going to cut off his cock with the dullest knife she owned and make him watch as she stuck it in a blender. Then, she was going to kill him so fucking slowly that she would end up dying of old age before he died from whatever torture she inflicted upon him.

“Ma’am,” the guard was saying, “we shouldn’t be lingering out in the open.”

“We’re fine,” she dismissed, the words coming out a little harsher than she meant. The guard went back to his silent watch, his head on a swivel. Holden frowned, glancing between them.

“We can wrap this up. But what do you think of my idea?”

What idea? The one with the dirt and plants? Sure, she thought. Why the fuck not. Amos stood right behind Holden’s shoulder, just watching and smiling. She noticed Bobbie staring at him. Avasarala cast the big mechanic a look that said _knock it off right the fuck now_ , but either the big man didn’t notice or he just wasn’t deterred. Bobbie’s eyes slid over to meet Avasarala’s. Something flickered across her face. Chrisjen hoped it wasn’t realization. A smile pulled at the corner of the Marine’s lips.

The guard started a little, his gaze focused on some point down the hall, eyes squinting with focus. “Madam Secretary—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Avasarala hissed at him. Holden said that he would let her go, that he’d think about the job and get back to her. He eyed the guard warily. Amos was grinning. He looked like an idiot, she was going to kill him, she was going to make his life a fucking hell—

Then, the world exploded around her. The guards shouted. One of them fell on top of her, his weight oppressive even in Luna’s low gravity. The other guard was firing her rifle, yelling into her radio, screaming for people to evac the area. Chrisjen smelled smoke. Heard the rapid bark of gunfire. She lifted her head to look.

“Stay down,” the guard on top of her shouted. He fumbled for his own gun, trying to brace his arms so he could fire a steady shot.

“What the fuck is going on!” she snarled, clawing at the guard, trying to throw him off of her back so that she could see. 

“Just stay down,” the man repeated as he stood, “and stay back!” He planted himself in front of her, lifting his own gun. She heard Holden shouting. One of the guards had tossed him a pistol and he was taking careful shots at the unknown attackers. She saw Bobbie wrestling someone to the ground with the grace and concentration of a lioness. Alex was swearing up a blue streak. Naomi and Clarissa had taken cover behind a partition. It was chaos. The emergency sirens were blaring, an automated voice telling people to evacuate in a dozen different languages. The one guard was still screaming into her radio for backups. Avasarala heard her say the word “outgunned”. That couldn’t be good.

Time seemed to move very slowly. Her ears rang from the gunfire. It only seemed to grow louder as U.N. troops joined the fray. She heard her guards issuing orders to the reinforcements as they appeared, shouting themselves raw over the noise. Heard someone yelp in pain. One of the reinforcements went down in a spray of red. Holden, huddled behind an overturned bench, barked something to Amos, who replied with a cheerful affirmation. Avasarala covered her head as a fresh barrage of gunfire erupted.

Suddenly the guard standing in front of her shouted and then there was a burly arm wrapping itself around her waist, pulling her up off the floor and away from whatever the fuck was happening. The sounds of the fight began to recede. The arm crushed her against a broad chest and hurried her down the hallway, carrying her like she weighed nothing. It all happened so fast that her head spun.

Her first thought as her captor whisked her away was that she would fire that guard for letting her get kidnapped. The second was that she was probably fucked.

She desperately tried to writhe out of her unseen assailant’s grip, but the arm just tightened around her waist. “Put me the fuck down!” she shouted, trying again to loosen herself. When the person chuckled, it sounded very familiar.

“I don’t think you want me to do that, Chrissie.”

She looked up. Amos was grinning down at her, his eyes wide and bright. He curled his body protectively around hers as he trotted down the hallway.

“Where the hell are you taking me?”

“Dunno yet. Somewhere where there aren’t any bullets flying. I think your guys are holding them off so they don’t chase us, but they kinda suck at their jobs, no offense.”

“Do you have to carry me like a child?”

Amos laughed. “Again, no offense, but we kinda got to get you somewhere safe quickly.”

She glared up at him. He shrugged as best he could and quickened his awkward low-gravity trot. Avasarala let herself be carried. He wasn’t _wrong_ , but that didn’t mean it didn’t piss her off. Her heart hammered in her chest.

Eventually Amos paused. “Here.” She glanced up and saw that they were outside of a coffee shop that was closed for the day. The windows had all been set to their darkest setting, and there were no gaudy signs or ornaments to make it stand out from the rest of the shops and offices in the U.N.’s Luna wing. Amos glanced back over his shoulder. The bark of gunfire could still be heard, the sound bouncing along the tile floors of the promenade. No one was chasing them, though.

Not yet at least.

“Put me down. _Now_."

Amos grinned down at her. “You got it, Chrissie.” He set her down gently on her feet, then regarded the door to the café. “You got some kind of I’m-the-queen override, or do I need to bust this door open?”

“Hang on.” She fumbled for her hand terminal. Her hands were shaking; she tried to hide them in the folds of her clothing so that he wouldn’t see. A bitter, sick taste rose up in the back of her throat. What the fuck was _happening_?

“No worries,” Amos said cheerfully. “I got it.” When she looked, he was lining himself up to muscle the door down, stepping back a few feet so he could put his weight behind it.

Her fingers found the hand terminal in the inner pocket of her blazer. “Wait—”

Amos, teed up like a linebacker, blinked at her. She pulled her terminal out and waved it over the door; the lock blinked a cheerful green. She turned to frown at him. “Don’t be a fucking animal.”

“Damn. You really have all the cool stuff, don’t you?”

She made a rude gesture, opened the door, and led them into the empty café. Amos immediately went to work. He looked around the shop, eventually grabbing one of the metal chairs and shoving it beneath the door handle. He smashed the security camera with a ceramic carafe, which cracked and leaked coffee all over his hands, and then began to flip the tables and arrange them into a makeshift barricade. He paused occasionally to lick coffee from his fingers. Avasarala grimaced.

When everything was arranged to Amos’ liking, he sat down behind his wall of tables and patted the ground next to him. “Pop a squat, Chrissie.”

Avasarala thought about replying with something rude, but her mouth felt very dry. She sighed and sat down next to him, tucking her legs beneath her like a geisha. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, she could finally think about what had just happened. Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling, though, and her felt like her heart was trying to leap from her chest.

“Yeah,” Amos said when he saw her stricken expression. “I don’t know what any of that was.”

She had to swallow before she replied. “Free Navy remnants?” she asked. Amos shrugged.

“They didn’t look like Belters to me.”

She swore underneath her breath. It would have been easy to deal with Free Navy—all she would have had to do was make a speech, prattle on about healing and the Transport Union and the future of the system and blah blah blah before she locked the fuckers up in jail forever.

“Who the fuck wants to kill me?” she wondered aloud. The answer, of course, was a lot of people. But who would want to _try_? She tried to think through the last report she had read on radical fringe groups, but nothing struck her as obvious. Amos said they weren’t Belters. So, maybe they were one of the groups that had sprung up after the rocks had hit Earth. Or Martians. There certainly were a lot of Martians looking for causes to join these days.

“Dunno. Hey, you got your hand terminal?” Avasarala handed it to him automatically, too distracted by her own thoughts to consider his request.

“Thanks,” Amos said, and then he snapped it in half. She swore, breaking from her reverie as the terminal made a final mournful noise. “Sorry. Figured they had some super-mega tracking software on there.”

“You’re not wrong,” she said sourly. “But it probably would have been useful.”

“Yeah, well,” Amos said, standing, “probably would’ve gotten us killed, too.” He hopped over the table barricade, glancing at the window as he did so. She heard him moving things around the coffee shop, opening and closing things. When he returned, he had two cups of cold coffee and a plate of stale doughnuts. He handed her a cup. She sipped it unconsciously, ignoring the terrible bitterness it had developed.

“They were pretty well-armed, whoever they were.” Amos picked up a doughnut and ate half of it in one bite. He chewed open-mouthed and contemplative. Crumbs fell from his mouth and caught in his beard.

“Fuck.”

“That reminds me,” Amos said, taking another doughnut. “You ever think about going for round two?”

“What?”

“You know, fucking. Round two of fucking.” A grin split his features and a shower of crumbs fell from his beard to his lap. “Since we got them chemistry and all that.”

Avasarala just stared at him. “There was just an attempt on my _life_ , and you’re thinking about _fucking_?” Amos raised his hands in a Belter shrug. His expression made it clear that if she was surprised, then that was her own problem.

She couldn’t believe this man. An armed group had just attempted to murder her, and he was still fantasizing about getting slapped around a little. She wondered, not for the first time, what could possibly be going on in that thick skull of his. A small part of her was a little envious; she wished she had that sort of attitude about all of this bullshit. Avasarala shook her head in disbelief and took a sip of her coffee to steady herself. She breathed in deep, like a lifetime of meditation had taught her, and willed herself to calm so that she wouldn’t drive the heel of her stiletto through his neck. “No. I don’t,” she lied. “Shut the fuck up and think of a plan to get us out of here. You’re the one who took me away from my _security team_.”

“Again, they kinda suck at their jobs. And actually,” he broke the doughnut in two and held half of it out to her. She eyed it disdainfully. “I was sort of wondering if you had any ideas about that, Chrissie. Seeing as this is your turf and all.”

“You whisked me away without a plan?!”

Amos waved the doughnut in front of her. “No plan is better than getting shot. You gotta eat.”

“I’m going to—” Chrisjen breathed in deeply again. She had to stay calm. She had to stay focused. She pictured beating Amos to death with his own boot and let the image sooth her. _Calm_. She plucked the doughnut from his hand and let it fall to the ground beside her. Amos gave her a look.

“There’s a saferoom. It’s where they would have taken me.”

“Well, there we go then.” Amos took another doughnut and ripped it into halves. “Calories, Chrissie. You gotta get some calories.”

She sighed and acquiesced, taking the doughnut. Amos stood to refill their cold coffee.

“You know,” Avasarala said, “I used to know a chef that would try and fatten me up with macarons. He died when the rocks hit.”

Amos sat back down beside her, handing her a cup. “Dunno what a macaron is, but that sucks.” 

She hummed and broke off a small piece of the doughnut to eat. It was covered in cinnamon sugar, which offset some of the biting acidity of the old coffee.

“So, this safehouse. Do you know how to get there?”

“They only drill us on evac procedures once a damn month.”

Amos chuckled. “Alright then. That’s as good a plan as any.” His hand terminal buzzed. Jim Holden’s face appeared on the screen, pale and appropriately stoic.

“Amos?”

“Hey, Cap. Chrissie’s here too.”

She saw Holden’s face contort just a bit at the nickname. “Where the hell are you guys? I told you to get her to cover, not…steal her. Security is about to lose their minds because the Secretary General isn’t showing up on the tracking software.”

Avasarala cast Amos a sour look. He shrugged apologetically.

“Can’t tell you that, Cap, but Chrissie’s got a plan to bring us to a safe space. Hey, everyone okay?”

“We’re fine. They have us in lockdown. Amos, listen—this is serious. They’re not sure what it is, but it’s some sort of coordinated attack. It’s big.”

“Yeah, kinda figured that much based on the firepower those goons were carrying. Don’t worry, Cap. We got a plan.”

A voice began to rise from outside, loud and tinged with the tension of anger. “Burton,” Avasarala hissed. “Shut up.”

Amos froze like a hunted animal, looked up, and tilted his head like a dog. “Gotta go, Cap,” he murmured before killing the connection to Holden. The voice drew closer, and then another joined in. Avasarala strained to hear the conversation, hoping to recognize the voices of her staff.

“…couldn’t have gone far. We get her, we get whatever we want from these fuckers. Search the…”

“Fuck.” The doughnut sat very heavy in her stomach now. Her guards hadn’t managed to drive the attackers away. That wasn’t a good sign.

“Well,” Amos said. “Getting out of here just got a lot harder.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on tumblr at pig-wings.tumblr.com.


End file.
